It is known that modern drying and ironing devices, designed to dry and iron textile elements (linen, sheets, woven materials, synthetic materials in the form of cloth or in any other form, whether woven or not) comprise a cylinder on which the textile element is stretched, dried and ironed.
Some of these machines comprise a heated tank and a non-heated cylinder. Others, of a smaller size, are not provided with a heated tank and comprise a heated cylinder. This heated cylinder may be fixed or rotary according to the type of machine. In these machines the input and output of the textile element takes place at the front, which facilitates handling, and the cylinder is heated internally by means of a heat source, supplied by gas, steam, electricity or any other suitable means or fluid. The textile element is introduced at the top, applied to the heated cylinder and entrained by an endless belt or by a system of endless strips, whether connected or spaced, distributed over the entire width of the cylinder. The belt or the strips are guided and/or entrained by auxiliary cylinders and the textile element, after having been dried and ironed, emerges at the bottom at the front of the machine and is collected in bulk in a front receiving container.
After removal from this container, textile elements which exceed certain dimensions must then be folded, this being carried out industrially by passing the textile elements through a folder or a folding device, or, in the case of small-scale operations, by hand. In both cases the required handling of the textile elements increases the cost of the operation. In the first case the gain in efficiency is accompanied by additional investment costs in machinery which affects the cost of the operation as a whole.